1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an optical connector component and an optical connector using the optical connector component in which a short-length optical fiber is attached to a ferrule in advance and which facilitates an operation for attaching an optical connector to a tip end of an optical fiber at an actual site.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, there have been demands for attaching an optical connector to a tip end of an optical fiber at an actual site, the operability of which site is restricted as compared with manufacturing facilities, so as to realize construction of an optical fiber-based access network, in-house optical interconnects or the like.
Conventionally, as a simple built-up optical connector to meet the demands, there is known an optical connector configured such that a short-length optical fiber is attached to a ferrule and then the end-process is performed in advance and such optical-fiber-attached ferrule is spliced, i.e., spliced to an another optical fiber by mechanical splicing at an actual site. There is also known an optical connector configured such that a similar optical-fiber-attached ferrule to that described above is fusion-spliced to an another optical fiber at an actual site and such that a fusion-spliced portion is stored in a housing.
However, the mechanically-spliced optical connector has disadvantages in that a manufacturing process for including the short-length optical fiber in the optical connector is complicated and cost increases. Furthermore, because of presence of optical connectors of many types different in the shape of the housing, it is necessary to prepare accurate mechanical splice members of shapes corresponding to the respective optical connectors, disadvantageously resulting in cost increase.
Furthermore, while the conventional fusion-spliced optical connector is superior to the mechanically-spliced optical connector in reliability of the spliced portion, it is required for the fusion-spliced optical connector to make the fusion-spliced portion shorter to store the fusion-spliced portion in the housing. For example, Patent Document 1 discloses a special reinforcement plate to serve as a reinforcement member that reinforces the fusion-spliced portion.
Meanwhile, it is required to perform many optical splicing operations in a short time to realize the construction of the optical-fiber-based access network, the in-house optical wirings or the like. Due to this, it is undesirable to increase such special operations to be performed at the actual site.